Community Works

Written by Andrew Sylvester

When I first met Josh two years ago, he told me about an upcoming Day of Caring at something called the Conscious Harvest garden. I was new to Morgantown, but had a mostly untested interest in gardening and in community. This seemed like a good match. The first day I went to the garden, I met a history professor, a couple of psychologists, and a handful of other people whose hobbies and occupations I don’t remember, but who came to the garden for much the same reason that I did. Some of them, like Josh, worked in and had a passion for food justice and sustainable living. Others, like me, were excited to have a space to be outside, learn some things, and have some engaging conversations. And everyone was probably looking for a new way to get their hands dirty for a couple of hours a week.

Most of the people that I’ve talked with at Conscious Harvest have their own gardens at home. So do I, and while I love spending some solitary time in it, and love the idea that my family and I get a portion of our food from it (as do the local beetles and caterpillars), there is something I can’t get from my garden: a community. I imagine this is true for many of the people who come to Conscious Harvest. Community is more than simply a collection of people. Community implies purpose and potential. It’s fueled by intention and aspiration. Communities come together to accomplish things that are larger than the individual, and that require the input and energy of its members to sustain itself.

Communities are also difficult to maintain sometimes, and I often lament that I don’t spend more time at the garden. It’s hard to make the time, between work, family, and our other obligations and distractions (*cough* the election *cough*). But this year I’ve helped clear brush from around the work shed; hauled manure from the WVU farms and spread it over some beds so that it could work it’s magic on the soil; grew some seedlings, watched them succumb to a fungus in my basement, then grew some new ones and helped transplant them into the garden beds; harvested some garlic, cucumbers, and tomatoes; and mowed some grass until the mower got tired. And I enjoyed a lot of conversations about West Virginia and food and what the garden could do and be.

In the two years that I’ve been going to it, Conscious Harvest’s mission and ambitions have grown and evolved, and in the four years since Josh and his friends first sunk their tools into the ground and turned over a bunch of grass and weeds, it has been sustained by an interested and interesting community of people who appreciate that something like this exists in a random field in the middle of their town. And it’s a nice spot to catch the sunset.

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